All-Star Opinions ....and Please Be Nice

[cheermom89]

We will be competing at our first competition of the year this weekend and we still have a lot of jitters.

After watching many videos that have been posted from comps the past few weekends, I noticed not one team hit solid or was clean; as expected.

So here is my question, if we aren't hitting everything solid should we water it down to hit or let them go so everyone can see what we will be hitting? Right now prob 4 of out of 6 stunts are hitting 90% of the time and the other 2 about 50% of the time. Granted they are very hard stunts but.......Now the final (and very important) factor is we aren't even competing against anyone. However, we would like to try for grand champs.

Please give me you positive opinions and be nice. Thanks :)

 

[BlueCat]

We will be competing at our first competition of the year this weekend and we still have a lot of jitters.

After watching many videos that have been posted from comps the past few weekends, I noticed not one team hit solid or was clean; as expected.

So here is my question, if we aren't hitting everything solid should we water it down to hit or let them go so everyone can see what we will be hitting? Right now prob 4 of out of 6 stunts are hitting 90% of the time and the other 2 about 50% of the time. Granted they are very hard stunts but.......Now the final (and very important) factor is we aren't even competing against anyone. However, we would like to try for grand champs.

Please give me you positive opinions and be nice. Thanks :)

Different gyms have different philosophies about early season and how much "risk" to include in routines. There is no single right answer. We tend to view early season competitions like "scrimmages" in football and use them to experiment with different things for different teams to see how they will perform and how they will score. Sometimes you want to water down to give the team confidence, sometimes you want to "go for it" to see what happens, other times you mix the two. Everything varies from coach to coach and program to program.

 

[cheermom89]

Different gyms have different philosophies about early season and how much "risk" to include in routines. There is no single right answer. We tend to view early season competitions like "scrimmages" in football and use them to experiment with different things for different teams to see how they will perform and how they will score. Sometimes you want to water down to give the team confidence, sometimes you want to "go for it" to see what happens, other times you mix the two. Everything varies from coach to coach and program to program.

Thank you so much for your reply. That is kind of where I am at. 50/50. It could be a great weekend or a tough one. We will see. Thanks again.

 

[samantha says]

We will be competing at our first competition of the year this weekend and we still have a lot of jitters.

After watching many videos that have been posted from comps the past few weekends, I noticed not one team hit solid or was clean; as expected.

So here is my question, if we aren't hitting everything solid should we water it down to hit or let them go so everyone can see what we will be hitting? Right now prob 4 of out of 6 stunts are hitting 90% of the time and the other 2 about 50% of the time. Granted they are very hard stunts but.......Now the final (and very important) factor is we aren't even competing against anyone. However, we would like to try for grand champs.

Please give me you positive opinions and be nice. Thanks :)

Basically what BlueCat said.... Some coaches/programs want to water it down, hit their routine with hopes of being successful right off the bat. Others want to see how their routines will score and have their "all in" routine judged to make revisions and improvements where necessary before the major nationals. I'd like to think we have a happy medium of the two. However, there really is no right answer to how it should be done.

 

[cheermomforever]

It is the first competition. I think alot of teams build up thru the year and add more difficult stunts later. In our gym our routine in April is much different than in December.

 

[ssccxnce]

personally for me, (and i may be the only person with this opinion) when i competed i wanted to go out there with the routine the way it was intended as hard as possible for the first competition simply to get the feedback from the judges and see what it feels like to run said routine. this way you can see by video or by the coaches what your full first run looks like at competition from then on if things need to come out or be watered down so be it.

just my rambling 2 cents

 

[tdittmar]

I would probably see how warmups go. Some groups practice horribly but hit the stage and kill it. If the two groups are shaky still I personally would water those down. Regardless of having other teams to compete against or not, every athlete wants to feel they did their best and falling at a comp in front of thousands of spectators is not very good for the ego. Being the first time out I would assume they are nervous enough already (:
Good luck! Our first comp is this weekend too!

 

[f5forever]

While I am a big "go for it" kind of person, my main concern would be safety. If they are safey hitting (or close to hitting) I would leave it in to see if their adrenaline kicks in and they may hit it. You could also water certain elements down; like they can't hit the full-up immediate stretch but can hit a full up pause lib, go for option 2. That's just my opinion though. As everyone has already stated, it's up to the coach/gym bc everyon's philosophy differs.

 

[FierceIsTheName]

My coaches told me once to go full out the first comp. because what if theres a stunt/move thats illegal. I'd rather have the deduction the first comp rather than at an important one. Hope this made sense...

 

[icheer8796]

It is the same situation for my team right now. The first competition we "went for it" and did the full stunt sequence, but we had 2 stunt falls and lost. Our next competition, this weekend, we're competing a watered-down version just to be safe and see how it scores.

 

[cheermom89]

Thanks so much everyone. I know it is such a 6 of one, half dozen of the other kind of thing. We have decided to go for it. However, anything that isn't safe we are watering down and 4 jumps to a back that aren't solid are marking. I will be praying to the cheer Gods like crazy on Sunday. Good luck to everyone competing.

 

[coachlex1019]

personally for me, (and i may be the only person with this opinion) when i competed i wanted to go out there with the routine the way it was intended as hard as possible for the first competition simply to get the feedback from the judges and see what it feels like to run said routine. this way you can see by video or by the coaches what your full first run looks like at competition from then on if things need to come out or be watered down so be it.

just my rambling 2 cents

I agree with you here. Whenever I watered down my kids' routines/my routines were watered down when I was still competing, often times we never ended up going back to the difficulty level that was intended at the beginning of the season.